Technical Field
The present disclosure relates generally to computing and amplifying and, more particularly, to systems and methods for optical computing and amplifying.
Description of the Background Art
Transistors in one form or another have been utilized for developing computing and amplification circuitry. Transistors when first developed were relatively large bulky devices. Transistors have been reduced in size and are now generally provided on semiconductor wafers and in the form of semiconductor chips. The density and speed of semiconductor chips has grown tremendously. It has been estimated that in a standard quad core processor there can be over 1 billion transistors. Moore's Law is an observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles every two years. Accordingly, for Moore's law to be true, the transistor needs to decrease in size every 2 years. However, manufacturers are faced with certain physical limits that can prevent the further reduction in size of the transistor. For example, at a certain size, the number of silicon atoms between transistor terminals will be so small that electrons will easily pass through the barrier when they should not. Accordingly, at some point in time, transistor size will no longer be able to be reduced utilizing traditional technology. Manufacturers are also faced with other physical limitations when reducing the size of semiconductor transistors and when putting more and more transistors into smaller and smaller semiconductor packages. For example, these denser semiconductor packages can produce a tremendous amount of heat which needs to be accounted for when utilizing these semiconductor packages in circuits
Accordingly, a need exists for devices capable of operating at high rates of speed in dense packages and at low temperatures.